


Solitaire

by Unicoranglais



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Gen, What Does Pot of Greed Do, duel, there is a literal explanation of Pot of Greed in this, this is just A Duel in written forme, we just don't know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-03
Updated: 2021-02-03
Packaged: 2021-03-14 18:41:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29175834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unicoranglais/pseuds/Unicoranglais
Summary: In which someone brings a 2020 deck into Battle City.(I was dared to write a Tenyi duel because the deck is one of many these days that are infamous for very long first-turn combos. So, here is the attempt. OCs are mine.)
Kudos: 4





	Solitaire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Aleksis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aleksis/gifts).



Butt parked in some weird old game shop to try and escape the heat, Erai Nakamura chugged another overpriced drink from the fridge, and pretended that lining up the cans with his leather deck–box on the otherwise empty desk was somehow riveting. For a city called _Battle City_ (even for this week only), the place sure did have its dull moments.

Shit, it was hot. Not even the shadows wanted a bar of it; the street outside was nothing but sun, people hugging the sides of buildings. Every now and then, a duelist would swear; too much time outside had fried the frail circuitry of their beloved Duel Disks.

Well, not Erai’s. His was still in the box, in mint condition. He’d checked it over twice for any dings, then put on his thick, black rimmed glasses, and checked again, with a magnifying glass. He wasn’t leaving here, not until it was cooler, for fear he might break his precious memento of _Battle City._

(“You don’t want to play with your new Disk?” asked Arkana, after Erai carefully took the device from the counter and wrapped it up in a pair of plastic bags. Erai shrugged. Arkana asked again, leaned over the counter, beady, greedy little eyes staring, squinting, assessing. Erai shrugged again.

“It’s more valuable this way.”

“Suit yourself”, said Arkana, and wandered off to his weird secret dungeon or whatever it was he had down there. Wasn’t like Erai was buying much.)

“Wanna play?”

“I already told you–”

It wasn’t Arkana. The kid was a fair bit younger than Erai looked – actually looked the kind of age to be playing a kiddie kard game, if he had to guess. Blonde hair, blue eyes. A Shrek hoodie. Cute kid, bad taste. No parents.

Oh great, so he was _babysitting_.

“No, you didn’t,” the kid whined. Strapped to his arm was a pastiche of cardboard and tape, a LED light poking through a skewer hole, and a calculator tied to the whole monstrosity. “And I wanna play, anyway. You’ve got cards. And I’ve got a new Duel Disk!”

It took Erai exactly three seconds to make a connection between the cardboard arm construction, and the phrase ‘new Duel Disk’. In that time, the kid reached – maybe to grab with juice–box–coated fingers. Erai’s hand flew to his deck–box, but the kid was only pointing. Now he was smirking, too.

“You’ve got _good_ cards! I bet they’re vintage.” Erai winced at that, and the kid grinned, coming closer to the table. His hands looked clean. “C’mon, what’ve you got? A first edition Blue–Eyes?”

Erai cleared his throat, trying to sound more important than he felt. “Of course not, there’s only three of those in the world.” And the kid just started _laughing_ at him. Great. “Listen. Your cards are worth a lot to you, right? Well, in Battle City, we have to stake our cards on the duels. And that means, if we duel, then when I win–”

“If you win!” Oh man, the kid probably thought a common Kuriboh was worth all the Yugi hype. Erai wasn’t exactly Seto Kaiba or anything, but he’d been collecting a while, and he had some good cards that would probably be worth a lot the less he played with them. He couldn’t go easy on the kid, but at the same time, surely he was going to stomp this match. The kid would probably cry or worse.

Erai sighed. “I don’t want to duel you. You’ll lose your cards.”

“No, you. _Duel!_ ” shouted the kid, brandishing his cardboard prop, and the calculator went flying straight into the head of a ceramic Dark Magician gnome. The whole thing shattered into a thousand pieces, and naturally, Arkana chose this exact moment to come back up the stairs.

“Oh! You’re _duelling!_ ”

“I am not!” Erai yelled back, panic building in his chest all of a sudden. There was something very, very wrong with Arkana of all people caring more about some duel than one of his beloved gnomes. Especially after how he’d tried to pressure Erai into playing before. “I– I didn’t accept _shit!”_

“Well, if you’re not duelling, you might have to pay for that very expensive prop you just broke.” Arkana held out a hand. “I think your deck might be valuable enough to cover it.”

“I… I…”

The kid grinned. Little shit!

 _“It’s his fault!”_ Erai just about screamed. The grin didn't shift a bit. 

“Hi, I’m Ash. Draw.” Pulling a rubber–banded bundle of cards from his pocket, the kid proceeded to drop his entire deck into the cardboard mockery of a Duel Disk. There was a terrific _thunk_ , then a _rip,_ then another, more final _thunk._ “Wow, whoops. You know what, you can go first!”

Erai’s jaw went slack at the sight. There were cards all over the floor, yes, all dog–eared and battered, the foils scratched up almost beyond recognition. They sure weren’t near–mint, let alone gradeable. A child’s cards, in kiddie condition. But stranger than this was what he saw written on them: names like _Tenyi_ and _Crusadia_. He’d never heard of such things. No way could he deal with new cards he’d not had a chance to AskJeeves!

Ash scooped all the cards together into a rough pile, and dumped them on the table. “C’mon, it’s your move.” 

“I…”

Shit. He couldn’t win, not without knowing the cards Ash was using. He couldn’t do that, he wasn’t Yugi or even Jounouchi. But Arkana was watching him. Smiling. Erai looked his way for half a second too long, and the smile widened into something frankly offputting.

“So you want my deck?”, he snarled. “How about you duel me, instead of sending some kid to do it?”

Arkana would be easier, surely. He was a Dark Magician user, if the shop’s schtick was any indication. Erai was fairly sure his ace card could take a Dark Magician. But Arkana only shrugged. “I only want you and your overpowered meta deck out of the way of the real champions. And you said you didn’t want to duel me, so perhaps some _new cards_ will tempt you. If not that, then I'll take your deck in exchange for my gnome.”

And with that collection of bribes, threats, and excuses, he marched downstairs.

“I’m gonna sell all your cards on eBay,” said Ash. He’d managed to get his cards organized into something resembling a deck, had even pulled up a chair drawn five cards to start with. It was almost sort of hobby-duelist level stuff, if you ignored the edges of his cards. Seriously, had he chewed them or something? “I'm gonna sell them as _hot singles._ And it’s your turn.”

Erai sighed, and easing his beloved cards from the deck–box, put them on the table. He’d sleeved them, since he was going out in the middle of Battle City and sort of needed them to prove he was a Duelist worthy of a Disk, but they still looked pristine behind the plastic.

They’d be back and safe in binder before long. For now, he drew, gently as he could. “Let’s see here – Pot of Greed. This card–”

“Droll and Lock Bird.”

“–lets me take two cards from the deck and–”

“Yeah, _nah_. You can’t do that.” And Ash shoved an Effect Monster card over towards him. Unlike the vast majority of Effect Monsters Erai knew much about, this thing had half an essay on it. Worse, a little holographic sticker at the bottom; it could only be genuine. “See? It’s the rules. Have you read it yet? Hurry up.”

Erai set his jaw. “Hang on. I’ve never seen this card before–”

“Anyway, your Pot of Greed is negated.” Ash slapped the card down in his discard pile. “Now what?”

“I mean, where did you even get a card like-”

"Arkana's really nice," said Ash, confirming exactly what Erai had been thinking about this whole thing. So the shop owners really were rigging games. "C'mon."

Erai glanced down at the cards in his hand. He didn’t really _need_ the Pot, anyway. After, all, he had the strongest card in the whole game, right there. And a Sangan, too. So, one Dark monster. And on top of _that…_ “I activate the effect of Thunder Dragon. By discarding one Thunder Dragon, I can add to my hand–”

“Ash Blossom." Another new card he knew absolutely nothing about, so Erai just stared at it until Ash gave some kind of explanation. It was... kind of a cute card, besides the essay of text at the bottom. He might put one in his binder, if it was in much better condition. "Uh, it means you don't add anything to hand.”

“I still discard, though?”

Ash nodded.

“Good. I’ll play this and this and this face–down.” Sangan, and a nice Negate Attack and a Trap Hole to go with it. His ace monster would be out on the next turn. Ash could have all the overpowered bullshit made–up new monsters that weren’t part of Erai’s meta, but the minute he summoned one with more than a thousand attack, he was screwed, and Erai could go home and maybe forget this thing ever happened. “And I end my turn.”

The kid licked his lips, and the cards started flying.

“Okay, so I special summon Nahata from my hand. Link into Monk. Activate Dragon Cycle, discard Mare Mare, add Adhara.” It was kind of like watching someone play solitaire, only Erai got to yell stop at some point. Except, you know, he had absolutely no clue what the happ was fuckening. “Now I special summon Adhara and–”

“Trap Hole!”

“You can’t, it’s all special summons. Trap Hole is for _normies._ ”

“It’s _what?”_

“Anyway, I’m going Adhara, linking into Shaman now. Activating Shaman, discarding Nahata, now I’ve got Mare Mare back on the board.”

“I wanna _read_ these,” Erai snarled, and again Ash shoved the cardboard across the desk in his general direction. Again, it was all essays. Everything was essays! “I– I don’t get this. You’ve got two monsters on the field. In one turn. Without using Monster Reborn.”

“Watch this. You see Mare Mare? I can make it _Mare Mare Mare Mare Mare._ Or however many Mares _four_ of them is.” Ash proceeded to do just that; apparently somewhere in the Mare’s text was the ability to make Tokens. “Aw, you look sad. Do I need to explain what the blue ones are?”

“They’re rituals, obviously,” Erai scoffed. “How come I can’t Trap Hole any of these?” Ash started laughing all over again, so he went on rather more hastily: “Look here, you just summoned a bunch of monsters in one turn. You’re breaking the rules!”

“Oh, please. It’s screwing the rules. And I’m not even done here. With these tokens, I’m gonna just Link into Berserker. And Crusadia Equimax. Now, I play Flawless Perfection of the Tenyi and Berserker attacks your facedown–”

“Sangan’s effect activates.” Good, a Dark and a Light monster in his Graveyard. Erai rifled through his deck. “I’ll add this Cyber Jar to my hand. You know what that does, right?”

“Oh, my Berserker’s immune to that!”

That was the one card _without_ an essay on it. It was also the kid’s very ugly three–thousand beatstick. Erai smelled a rat. “How come?”

“Oh, it’s because of the field spell. Flawless Perfection of the Tenyi.”

“Thanks, now I know what to get rid of.”

Ash narrowed his eyes. “You can try. Crusadia Equimax has five thousand attack, by the way, since it adds Berserker's attack to its own. And you've only got four thousand life points, so you lose. Also, this isn’t even my final board, my final board has Blue–Eyes _Ultimate_ Dragon and–”

“Negate Attack.” He flipped it up with a bit of flamboyancy, just to make the kid seethe. “And now it’s my turn. So I think I’ll remove one Light and one Dark monster in my graveyard, to summon a card so rare, even _you’ve_ never seen a mint condition one.”

The kid’s little face lit up. “A first–edition Blue–Eyes White Dragon?”

“No! It’s Chaos Emperor Dragon: _Envoy of the End!_ ” Erai folded his arms. He was frankly getting a little carried away from all the goading, and couldn’t care less. “Admit it! You’ve not seen one of these being played. Even I just keep it in the binder. You’re actually pretty lucky I brought it here today – I just wanted the extra deck rating, so I could get a Duel Disk.”

“I thought that was _banned!_ Even in your old, boring format!” Now it was Ash’s turn to shake and feel some frustration. And, as much as Erai didn't like to play, as much as he'd rather keep all his cards in the binder, there was just _something_ about the kid's reaction that riled him right up.

“You sealed your fate by putting all those monsters on the board!" Okay, so that didn't sound so much like Yugi as he hoped. Erai adjusted his glasses, feeling somewhat self conscious. "Anyway. With this card, I can paying a thousand life points, to send all of your cards – that includes the protective field one, and all the cards in your hand – to the graveyard. I’ll send all my cards, too. You lose three hundred life points for each one. Then I can attack with it, and...” Erai nodded, and started putting away his card. "Well, that's more than four thousand life points, all up. You lose.”

“I activate– wait, I don’t have a Vishuda in my hand! I should have added it – I could have – this isn’t _fair!_ ”

“Not like _you_ were being fair.”

Ash stared for a long moment, seeming to tear up – then he threw back his head and howled with mirth. “You won! I don’t believe this! I got totally stomped by a GOAT! Okay, that’s it! You have to teach me now!”

“I do _not!”_

The kid stuck out his tongue. “If you won’t, you have to take my deck. It's the rules! It’s all in such _greaaaaaaat_ condition, I only licked some of these twic–”

“Okay! Okay! I’ll teach you. But with different cards. These ones are too special to play with, seriously.” He only half–meant it, though.

Arkana reappeared behind the counter. “Well? Has Erai lost yet?”

Erai sighed. “I think we'd better go play somewhere _without_ him.”

**Author's Note:**

> _Karma's gonna come collect your debt!_
> 
> While I was writing this, I became aware of an extremely long Yu-Gi-Oh combo, which apparently takes 140 days to execute all the way through. See here: https://ygorganization.com/infernity-loop-satisfaction-version/ 
> 
> I'm not writing that, but if you do, you'd better tell me so I can gaze upon its utter majesty.


End file.
